Zainab Johnson
Zainab Johnson (Amazon Prime, Netflix) joins Esteban in the sauna to talk about etiquette, dogs, and how all these big businesses love making us feel guilty. We’re getting gaslit from guys who own yachts.
HOSTED BY Esteban Gast
DIRECTED BY Stoney Sharp
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR / EDITOR Connor Linnerooth
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS Adam McKay, Staci Roberts-Steele, Anna Wenger, Jessie Bluedorn, Esteban Gast
GUEST Zainab Johnson
PRODUCER Stoney Sharp, Carl Fieler
ASSOCIATE PRODUCER Brittney Badduke
CONSULTING PRODUCER Elijah Zarlin
DP / CAMERA OPERATOR Connor Linnerooth
SOUND Brandon Cruz
SET MEDIC Paul Joubran
SPECIAL THANKS to Big Oil for being so sneaky and evil that we had to make a show about their disinformation and lies.
FACTS, REFERENCES, AND MORE
The American Petroleum Institute Copied Big Tobacco Playbook
- Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) – The primary research organization that documented the overlap between Big Oil and Big Tobacco’s PR operations going back to the 1950s. Their “Smoke and Fumes” project.
- Scientific American: “Tobacco and Oil Industries Used Same Researchers to Sway Public.”
- The 1998 API memo leaked to the New York Times, this document showed the American Petroleum Institute planning a multi-million dollar PR campaign to make “a majority of the American public” believe “significant uncertainties exist in climate science.” Senator Whitehouse’s Senate floor speech is one of the best documented summaries.
22,000 ANTI-CLIMATE TWEETS, 60+ EXXON-FUNDED ACCOUNTS
- Boston University’s own summary of the research — “Tweets, Ads, and Lies: Researchers Are Fighting Against Climate Misinformation“
- Boston University Climate Disinformation Initiative
- Grist on the two main narratives pushed by Exxon-funded accounts: “Climate change is not threatening” and “Biden’s energy plans hurt economic growth”
BP INVENTED “CARBON FOOTPRINT” IN 2004 TO SHIFT BLAME TO INDIVIDUALS
- The Guardian, Rebecca Solnit’s viral op-ed: “Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed“
- NPR / WBUR On Point: Interview with Harvard/Miami climate researcher Geoffrey Supran, who traces BP’s 2004–2006 campaign through the ad agency Ogilvy & Mather and explains why “carbon footprint” was barely used before BP spent over $100M/year popularizing it (it was Oxford’s word of the year the year after their campaign)
SO MANY OTHER THINGS TO LEARN AND GET FIRED UP
Books:
- Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway — the essential book on how the same scientists and PR operatives moved from tobacco to climate denial
- The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann — on how the fossil fuel industry shifted from outright denial to deflection and delay
- Exxon: The Road Not Taken — the Inside Climate News investigative series that broke the “Exxon Knew” story open (only available at insideclimatenews.org)
Documentaries:
- Merchants of Doubt (2014, dir. Robert Kenner) — based on the Oreskes/Conway book, on the professional doubt industry.
- The Power of Big Oil – We literally recommend this every episode! (Free on YouTube)
Journalists and outlets we love:
- InsideClimate News — Pulitzer Prize winner; broke the “Exxon Knew” story
- ProPublica — outstanding on corporate accountability
- DeSmog — fossil fuel industry PR, lobbying, and disinformation
- ExxonKnews — fossil fuel industry disinformation and the accountability movement
- HEATED by Emily Atkin — Substack accountability journalism specifically for the climate crisis
- The Lever — David Sirota’s investigative outlet tracking corporate power and corruption
- Drilled by Amy Westervelt — investigative climate podcast
Drilled by Amy Westervelt — investigative climate podcast
